Road Trip Through History: The Alamo
The first thing that struck me about the Alamo when I visited it with My Own True Love back in October* was how small it is.** It casts a historical shadow disproportionate to its size.
The Alamo is billed as "the shrine of Texas liberty". Consequently, I expected a monument to the famous last stand of a small band of Texan soldiers*** against Santa Anna and the Mexican Army in 1836. I wasn't disappointed. There was definitely a monument in the best heroic tradition.
But the modern historical site is more than the shrine it claims to be. The exhibits at the site definitely tell the story of the besieged garrison--and tell it well. More interesting, at least to me, they also place the event firmly in the larger historical context of the region.
Here are some of the details that caught my attention:
- The Alamo was originally built as the church for the mission of San Antonio de Valero in 1718--part of a string of missions built by the Spanish to strengthen their claim to the region in the face of French incursions. (It's no accident that San Antonio and New Orleans were founded the same year.)
- The mission was supplied with water using technology that was a direct descendent of Arab technologies for making the best use of scarce desert resources--brought to Spain by the Muslims in the 10th century CE. (We divide history up into academic fields for reasons of convenience, but it really is all connected.)
- Alamo is the Spanish word for cottonwood. (I'm not the only one who wants to know this kind of thing, right?)
- The story of how the Alamo was saved as an historical monument was interesting in its own right. Adina de Zavel, granddaughter of the first vice-president of the Republic of Texas, was dedicated to the preservation of Texas historic structures. In 1908, "Miss Adina" barricaded herself in the structure for three days and nights to prevent it being razed--a heroic stand on a smaller scale.
The Alamo is a "must-see" if you're in San Antonio. If you're in the area, up for a drive and a hard-core history buff, I recommend that you also visit Fort Martin Scott outside of Fredericksburg, which served as a frontier army post for the United States Army from 1848 to 1853. The buildings were closed when we were there, but the site is designed for self-guided tours.
* What can I say? It's been a busy time here in the Margins. I finally put a sticky on my computer that said "Remember the Alamo". Which made me laugh for several weeks even if it didn't get this post written any faster.
** And it doesn't have a basement. (See Pee-wee's Big Adventure. Or ask Amy Sue Nathan to explain. )
*** Loosely defined
The Crusades From Another Perspective
Recently I've been reading Sharan Newman's Defending The City of God: A Medieval Queen, The First Crusade And The Quest for Peace In Jerusalem. It was a perfect read for March, which was Women's History Month.*
Newman tells the story of a historical figure who was completely new to me. Melisende (1105-1161) was the first hereditary ruler of the Latin State of Jerusalem, one of four small kingdoms founded by members of the First Crusade. Her story is a fascinating one. The daughter of a Frankish Crusader and an Armenian princess, Melisende ruled her kingdom for twenty years despite attempts by first her husband and then her son to shove her aside. Even after her son finally gained the upper hand, Melisende continued to play a critical role in the government of Jerusalem. Those few historians who mention Melisende at all tend to describe her as usurping her son's throne.** Newman makes a compelling argument for Melisende as both a legitimate and a powerful ruler. (In all fairness, this is the kind of argument I am predisposed to believe.)
Fascinating as Melisende's story is, Newman really caught my attention with this paragraph:
Most Crusade histories tell of the battle between Muslims and Christians, the conquest of Jerusalem and its eventual loss. The wives of these men are mentioned primarily as chess pieces. The children born to them tend to be regarded as identical to their fathers, with the same outlook and desires. Yet many of the women and most of the children were not Westerners. They had been born in the East. The Crusaders states of Jerusalem, Edessa, Tripoli, and Antioch were the only homes they knew.
Talk about a smack up the side of the historical head!
If you're interested in medieval history in general, the Crusades in particular, or women rulers, Defending the City of God is worth your time.
* It was also nice to spend some time in a warm dry place, if only in my imagination. Here in Chicago, March came in like a lion and went out like a cold, wet, cranky lion.
** To put this in historical context. Melisende's English contemporary, the Empress Matilda (1102-1167) was the legitimate heir to Henry I. After Henry's death, her cousin Stephen of Blois had himself crowned king and plunged England into a nine-year civil war to keep her off the throne. Apparently twelfth century Europeans had a problem with the idea of women rulers.
The Other American Colonies
I struggled to come up with a title for this post that was not United States-centric*--a fact which pretty much sums up the topic at hand. For most Americans** the grade school version of history that we carry in our heads jumps from Columbus in 1492 straight to the arrival of the Puritans in Massachusetts in 1620. *** There's a vague awareness that the Spanish and the French were out there doing something. Colorful bits bubble through: conquistadores, voyageurs, New Orleans, the Alamo. But for the most part, the story focuses on the development of the thirteen more or less English colonies.
I do pretty well on the French part of the story. For the last fifteen years or so, My Own True Love and I have been on the trail of the French in North America--easy to do if you regularly drive from the historic Illinois Country to the land of the Louisiana Purchase. But I knew I had gaps where the Spanish colonies in the New World were concerned. In the last months of 2013, thanks to family weddings in Texas and Chile,**** I discovered that those gaps were an abyss.
Filling in the hole, one story at a time, is going to take a while. (Not that I'm complaining. This is the kind of history I like best: the places where two cultures meet and change each other.) In the meantime, I'm beginning to squeeze the history of the Spanish colonies into the scaffolding of dates/ideas/images/people from which I view world history. Here are a few of the bits that have caught my attention:
- Harvard, founded in 1636, was not the first university in the New World. That honor goes to the University of Saint Thomas Aquinas in Santo Domingo (now the Autonomous University of Santo Domingo), which was founded in 1538. The Royal and Pontifical University of Mexico (now the National Autonomous University of Mexico) was a close second, founded in 1551. Just to put this in context, the oldest continuously running university in the world is Al-Azhar in Cairo, founded in 960 CE. Europeans called the Americas the New World for a reason.
- Mexico City was the largest, and possibly the wealthiest, city in the Americas in 1776, with a population of 137,000. Philadelphia, the largest city in the thirteen colonies, had a population of 40,000. Not a meaningful measure in itself, but a useful reminder. Gold and silver from the Spanish colonies flooded Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. I'm used to looking at that flood in terms of its impact in Europe and Asia, not in terms of the colonial society that produced it.
- I was already familiar with baroque poet-nun Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz (1651-1695), who regularly appears in the pantheon of feminist precursors. I didn't realize that she is simply the most famous of an entire generation of Mexican intellectuals interested in questions of Mexican identity and history. I clearly need to learn more about criollismo: nationalism in another form.
- And the one that had me gaping with disbelief at my own ignorance: Mexico was a stop on Spain's version of the Asia trade as early as 1573. The ships known as the Manila galleons brought Asian merchandise through the Philippines to the Spanish port of Acapulco. The goods were then carried by mule to Mexico City and Veracruz, where they were shipped to Spain. A neat way of getting around Portuguese control of the Indian Ocean.
It feels like history nerd Xmas.
* And failed. Or at least failed to come up with something that didn't sound like the driest survey course text ever written.
**Or at least for most of us raised in the United States, as opposed to those raised in other parts of the Americas. Linguistic sinkholes gape before me. Just like the early days of graduate school when as students of the Indian sub-continent we struggled to find words that did not rest on imperialist/racist assumptions. It isn't just a question of "political correctness". Sometimes the language used shapes the knowledge itself.
***Or perhaps the arrival of settlers at Jamestown in 1607, depending on where you grew up or how historically inclined your third grade teacher was. Personally, I owe a great deal of my historical curiosity to Mrs. Bates of Delaware Elementary.
****The educational benefit of weddings should never be underestimated.